You can find newspaper content on both Westlaw and Lexis, as well as through databases available from the Lemieux Library. If you’re doing research on Washington history, however, you may want to use the Seattle Times archive from the Seattle Public Library. This archives includes the complete Seattle Times from 1895 to the present.

Network and Lexis printouts can be picked up in the Document Delivery Center (DDC) on the second floor of the library. If you forget to pick up a print request the day that you print it, don’t reprint it until you check the DDC. Print requests are held for a week before being recycled.

If you need to print a case, statute or law review article, remember that you can print for free from your Lexis account.

Westlaw, Lexis and Bloomberg all have some non-legal resources (including news, business and people finding tools), but sometimes you need more than that. Lemieux Library, SU’s undergraduate library, subscribes to a number of useful databases. Look through the list by subject area to find multiple resources for your research.

Law students tend to think of Westlaw and Lexis as the only sources for online legal research. However, these are just two of the many useful databases the Library provides. Check the Library’s list of databases for other useful options including BloombergLaw, Hein Online, and Proquest Congressional.

Thinking about the cost of living outside of law school? WestlawNext offers an easy way to have a look at some of the pricing for various research services. From the WestlawNext start page, click on Tools and select Subscriber Pricing Guide. There you will see that if you have transactional subscription and the 50 State Surveys are outside your subscription, you could pay $250 to view a single survey!

Most WestlawNext customers have subscription plans that include content they use most often. The prices on the published table are for the costs to view or deliver documents that are not included in a WestlawNext subscription plan. Pricing listed reflects the “out of plan cost” of most content, but keep in mind that prices may vary for specific content.

We all have done those initial searches on WestlawNext that provide lots and lots of results. Rather than start over, there are a couple of ways to tailor your results. You can search for specific terms or select filters for your search.

One way to narrow WestlawNext results is by searching within the result—type the specific terms you are looking for in the Search within results text box under Narrow in the left column and click Search. Both your original search terms and the terms used to narrow your result are highlighted in the documents. Then you can quickly scroll through the results to find specific documents you want.

To undo a search within a result, click Undo search within in the left column.

Another technique to narrow a search is to filter search results. To do this, select one or more filters under Narrow in the left column. Filters vary by document type. For example, the filters available for cases include jurisdiction, date, reported status, topic, judge, attorney, law firm, key number, party, and docket number. To select more than one filter to apply at the same time, click Select Multiple Filters, then select the filters you want to add and click Apply Filters.

To undo all filters you have added, click Undo Filters under Narrow.

Using either technique, sometimes an unwieldy result can become something manageable!

Westlaw has several directories for finding expert witnesses. Click on the Directory link at the top of the main Westlaw search page. Scroll down to the Directories Reference heading and then choose Expert Witness Directories.

Have you ever used Westlaw, clicked on the link “View Westlaw Reporter Image (pdf)” (which should give you a digital image of the original document) and had the screen flash but nothing happened? A call to the Westlaw representative (from link on Westlaw homepage), revealed that Westlaw users frequently encounter problems with viewing, downloading or printing, particularly with pdf files. Many of these are caused by the “security” of your internet browser, it is blocking pop-ups. So here are a couple of fixes. (more…)

Are you taking a summer course or doing research for a professor and need access to Lexis and Westlaw? Make sure you register for summer access. If you qualify, you can extend your Lexis and Westlaw access.

For Lexis:

Students must register for summer access by June 1st, 2010. To do so, you can sign in at www.lexisnexis.com/lawschool and click on the “Register for Summer Access” box in the middle of the screen. From there, just follow the steps and select the appropriate reason for registering for summer access.